Re: This is not a real controversy
“Defence against foreign aggressors = ok”
The problem is that anything that the military has can always be used against its own population or section of its population from clubs and guns to planes and drones. There are plenty of examples of this in the past 100 years even from my country UK.
I really do not have a problem with major companies producing/developing for the military. I do have a problem when they are hypocrites about it, by saying they won’t but still do. The only exception to this is when what they are developing’s obvious purpose is to be used against their own population, I always have a problem with that.
Also, it is almost impossible not to have somethings a large company develops being used by the military they will find a way to militarise it.
The military are very good and seeing military use for things. I remember 30 odd years ago my degree dissertation was on using neural networks to classify crops from satellite images. I was working in the mapping lab running a network to produce a map. The University had an open day for business (funding for the University) and were showing people around the lab telling them what each of the students was working on. The only one of these people interested in what I was doing was from the Army (the uniform gave it away). He was asking question like accuracy and could it be used to identify other things rather than crops. Like what I asked to which he replied tanks. He actually gave quite a few things all that would be military targets but its tanks I remember it was first one he mentioned.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
